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2012 Wave 2

I finally found some of these figures, over four months after wave 1 first hit. I only got Obi-Wan and Rex, as I got Aayla in her first release and Boss was nowhere around.

The trend is clearly towards less articulation in this line, but Rex has even less articulation than Cody or the plain Clone from wave 1. He has swivel articulation at the waist and hips and ball joints at the head, shoulders, and elbows. This, added with the permanently attached helmet, makes it feel much cheaper and than the newly-tooled Phase I Rex from late last year, which had fantastic articulation. I can deal without ankles, and the loss of knees makes it feel like a figure from way earlier in the line, but the lack of wrist articulation is just weird. It's not like they would have even had to tool anything new, as the parts were there in many previous clones. The launching cannon is the same one we've seen a hundred times, so there's no money lost there. His back has a hole for a nonexistent jetpack; I'm not sure if it's reused from one of the other clones, but either way it's strange. I wonder if this figure was rushed or something, since he came out relatively soon after Rex's Season Four armor changeover. Even his viewfinder is permanently stuck in place. Maybe this is part of the "kiddification" of the line as seen in those 5-POS - er, POA - battle packs, but it feels like it went a step or two too far. Nevertheless, the overall sculpt does look really good, and he has some weathering on his body (but not the helmet) which hasn't been seen in this line since 2008. As a display piece whose poses have been more or less determined for you already, he works. He'll look cool next to that long-ago-announced Krell, whenever that comes out (if it ever does).

Obi-Wan is an all-new sculpt. As with Anakin, he had a kinda-subpar-but-mostly-okay Season Three/Four figure released already, so the decision to completely revamp so soon after that one is a little odd. He has ball joints at the head, shoulders, elbows, and knees, plus swivel articulation at the waist and legs. Much like Rex, he has no wrist articulation, so he can't really do any two-handed saber poses. His left hand has the two first fingers sculpted pointing out, so he can do his now-signature fighting stance, at least. He also has no soft goods, which give the wave 1 Anakin a greater range of motion. On the plus side, I like his head sculpt much better than the tiny pinhead we got on last year's version. He comes with a lightsaber that's only been painted straight silver, which is a cheapo move, and the same backpack as last year's Even Piell with different colors here and there. Had they given him wrist articulation, it would have been a fantastic figure; as it is, it's still quite good, but frustrating due to the almost-there factor.

Last year was quite a great year for the line - even though there weren't very many figures made, there was a good mix of kid and collector appeal with main and obscure characters sprinkled throughout. They almost seem determined to kill it this year, if not through the lack of product then by the lack of care. At least the figures are sculpted well, anyway . . .